


Run

by SegaBarrett



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: AU season 5, F/M, References to Noncon and Torture, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:33:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21590803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: There are a lot of things Frank should run from.
Relationships: Frank Delfino/Bonnie Winterbottom, Laurel Castillo/Frank Delfino
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16
Collections: Fortune Favors: Round One— Rider-Waite-Smith





	Run

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own How to Get Away with Murder, and I make no money from this.
> 
> Cards chosen: wheel of fortune, the sun (reversed), 2 of wands (reversed)

Breathe in, breathe out. What a thing to take for granted, right? Frank felt as if an elephant had climbed on to his chest and decided it would be an excellent place to take a nap, but he didn’t remember how he had gotten here. Everything hurt and something – someone? – was holding him down. 

When he swung his arm upwards in a forceful motion, however, he found his arms free. Something was beeping around him. 

A hospital bed.

He didn’t have enough strength to explore past that, but a hospital was safe, wasn’t it? It was one of those places that was supposed to be safe.

He fell back asleep again.

***

Frank’s mind was running away with him. He didn’t dream, not usually, but this wasn’t a usual day, this wasn’t a usual moment. 

He was with Laurel, in the car, and she was covering his mouth. Her weight was against him, pressing him down and he could (his brain saying he could push her back and make a run for it but no) not escape and she wasn’t listening and he might as well just shut up and let her do what she was going to do because it was what she wanted.

And then she had left and told him that it was just about Wes and then he was left… left with himself.

***

He started up, feeling everything ache and break and then Bonnie was there in his ear talking about how worried she was, how she was afraid that they would lose him. 

He told Bonnie that he loved her while his brain screamed _Laurel, Laurel_ – he had been looking for Laurel when they had shocked him from the inside out, when they had let the little pieces inside him fry and burn. 

He didn’t know if he loved Bonnie. He was used to her, certainly (and she wouldn’t hold him down, no, not Bonnie, she would know not to do that), but was that love? And had he loved Laurel, Laurel, Laurel?

He didn’t know what it would mean to open his heart to Bonnie. He didn’t know a lot of things.

What if he looked up into the ceiling and just saw himself looking back at him, a murderer and a liar and a man who was always making the wrong decisions?

And there was Laurel screaming in his brain telling him to come find her, daring him to come find her.

She was telling him that he could come back, that if he found her, that he could be Christopher’s father and everything could be happy families.

Why did that thought fill him with relief and terror at the same time? What was wrong with him?

Maybe it would be easier to try to figure out what was left that wasn’t wrong with him.

***

His heart felt as if it had melted down his leg, down into his sock and shoe and drifted away.

Maybe that had happened a long time ago.

He couldn’t put a finger on the feeling. He just wanted to find Laurel. He needed to find her and bring her and Christopher back home and then they would all be safe and Frank could twist his lips into a smile again, no matter how unnatural it tended to feel sometimes.

“You seem a million miles away,” Bonnie told him. She was sitting beside his hospital bed, looking down at him with that pursed look of concern she always got when it had to do with Frank, or maybe when it was to do with anything.

“Yeah, sorry. It’s just the painkillers, I think.” Frank wasn’t sure if he was even on any; the pain was sharp and right through him, pulsating and seeming to threaten to take him over at any moment, to plummet him back into any one of the dark places that lived inside of him. Places he didn’t want to take Bonnie too; not if he could help it, at least.

“You were mumbling something in your sleep,” Bonnie told him, in a kind of voice that betrayed the extent to which she knew what it was like to feel trapped in a dream.

“What was I mumbling about? Probably about how good you look right now,” Frank said, trying to add in a swagger that he didn’t feel. It hadn’t been the first time he had gotten tuned up by some group of assholes – why was he letting any of this unsettle him? He had rattled the Castillos; maybe that was good. Maybe this meant that he was getting closer to finding Laurel.

“Frank, come on. Quit with that. You don’t have to put on some kind of brave face… Maybe they should up your pain medication… Let me ring for that nurse okay?”

Frank put his hand over hers. 

“No, it’s not that… They… I’m pretty sure they have me on the good stuff, Bon. It’s just… it’s stupid. I keep replaying something in my mind and… well, it doesn’t make any sense but I can’t shake it. Does that part, uh, make any sense?”

“Well, you used a lot of words to say it, but yeah, that makes sense,” Bonnie said, perching herself on the edge of his hospital bed. “What do you keep replaying in your mind? Something that the Castillos did? I mean, that’s to be expected…”

“No, not them. Well, I mean, not exactly.”

“What, then?”  
“See, now I already feel stupid saying it.” Frank breathed in through his nose – a harder feet as of a few hours ago – and breathed out, “There was this time that Laurel was pregnant and we… well, it just happened, and she kind of pressed her hand over my mouth. And I keep seeing it and feeling – weird about it. That dumb enough for you?”

“Wait, what? Like Laurel was choking you during sex?”

“No, nothing like that. Just… we were talking and then she made a move, I said no, and she covered my mouth and said, ‘it’s just sex, shut up and take it.’ You know, some old bodice ripper shit.” As soon as he saw Bonnie’s lips curl down into a frown, he knew that he shouldn’t have said it. He tried to force out a chortle. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Stupid. They have me on too many meds.”

“You know that’s not okay, right? That Laurel… what she did was…”

“Come on, Bonnie, don’t hit me with an afterschool special. I can take care of myself. It was just Laurel being stupid and pregnant. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

He kept his lips shut and Bonnie let out a sigh, but she didn’t pursue it.

Which made Frank even more uneasy than before.

***

It was three weeks later when Frank awoke to Laurel standing in his room, with a carseat in her hand.

“We have to go, right now,” she told him, and he blinked, sitting up in bed and wincing at the sudden pull of pain it gave him.

“Laurel? Where did you even come from?”

_I’m through with Laurel. All she brings me is pain._

“I don’t have time to give you a recap, Frank. We have to go.”

He starting to go limp as she grabbed his hand, and she let out another growl of frustration.

“Come on, Frank, you gotta help me with this kid.”

She cocked her head to the side and gave him the look of one who was already fed up.

“Where were you?”

“That isn’t important now. Where I was isn’t safe anymore. Now get up here and help me already, Frank. I don’t really have time for this right now.”

“Laurel. Laurel… wait.”

“What?”

“Do you remember… back when you were pregnant with Christopher… that time in the car?”

“Don’t remind me,” Laurel said with a scoff, “Why did you let me do something as stupid as that?”

Frank’s mouth opened just slightly, and then he closed it again and rose from the bed to take Christopher’s carseat by the handle.

He turned to look behind him; Bonnie would still be sleeping, probably. Or up with another nightmare.

He wouldn’t have time to say goodbye. Not this time.


End file.
